William Shatner and Leonard
Nimoy have appeared in episodes of six different series together. The
Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964), Mission: Impossible (1966), Star Trek
(1966), Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973), T.J. Hooker (1982) and
Futurama (1999).

William "Bill" Shatner (born
March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor, singer, author, film director,
spokesman, and comedian. He gained worldwide fame and became a
cultural icon for his portrayal of James T. Kirk, Captain of the
United Federation of Planets starship USS Enterprise, in the science
fiction television series Star Trek (196669), Star Trek: The
Animated Series (197374), and in seven of the subsequent Star
Trek feature films (197994). He has written a series of books
chronicling his experiences playing Captain Kirk and being a part of
Star Trek, and has co-written several novels set in the Star Trek
universe. Shatner also has enjoyed success with a series of science
fiction novels published under his name, though most are widely
believed to have been written by uncredited co-writers such as
William T. Quick and Ron Goulart. The first, published in 1989, was
TekWar. This popular series of books led to four TekWar television
movies and a short-lived television series airing on USA Network and
Sci-Fi Channel. Shatner played the role of Walter Bascom, the lead
character's boss and directed some of the television episodes.

Shatner
played the eponymous veteran police sergeant in the TV series T. J.
Hooker (198286). Afterwards, he hosted the reality-based
television series Rescue 911 (198996), which won a People's
Choice Award for Favorite New TV Dramatic Series. He has since worked
as a musician, author, director and celebrity pitchman appearing in
advertisements for many companies and products such as the Commodore
VIC-20 home computer and priceline.com.

After David E. Kelley saw Shatner's
commercials, he joined the final season of the legal drama The
Practice. His Emmy-award winning role, the eccentric but highly
capable attorney Denny Crane, was essentially "William Shatner
the man... playing William Shatner the character playing the
character Denny Crane, who was playing the character William
Shatner." Shatner took the Crane role to Boston Legal (below),
and won a Golden Globe, an Emmy in 2005, and was nominated again in
2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009 for his work. With the 2005 Emmy win,
Shatner became one of the few actors (along with co-star James Spader
as Alan Shore) to win an Emmy Award while playing the same character
in two different series. Even rarer, Shatner and Spader each won a
second consecutive Emmy while playing the same character in two
different series. Shatner remained with the series until its end in 2008.

Boston Legal featured a routine whereby
characters would occasionally break the fourth wall and make comments
implying they are aware that they are characters in a television
show. Shatner, being famous for portraying Captain Kirk, also makes
occasional Star Trek references, including:

In the Season Two episode "Finding
Nimmo", while Denny and Alan are on a fishing trip to British
Columbia, Alan refers to a sea-lice ailment suffered by some local
fish as cling-ons; Denny, as though recalling something
from vague, distant memory comments Did you say Klingons?

In the Season Two episode "The Cancer
Man Can", Denny tries out a new cell phone. The clamshell-style
phone flips open and makes the exact sound made by the old Star Trek communicators.

In the Season Two episode "There's
Fire", Dennys new wife Beverly suggests that they move to
Hawaii. Denny asks her, What am I supposed to do? Beam myself
to Boston every morning?

In the ninth episode of the second season,
Denny shoots a homeless man named Kirk, another reference to
Shatner's Star Trek character. Later in the episode Alan Shore calls
to Mr. Kirk while seemingly speaking to Denny.

In an argument between Denny and Paul
(Rene Auberjonois) over who controls the company most, Denny calls
himself 'Captain of the ship'.

In the Season 3 finale, while walking
through a crowd of reporters clamoring for a quote, Denny Crane says
he once captained his own spaceship.

Armin Shimerman (above right), who
appeared along with Rene Auberjonois on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as
Quark played a judge in the third season. The pair have a scene
together and reference the idea that they are old friends.

Jeri Ryan (above middle), the actress who
played Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, appeared on two episodes
of the second season.

Michelle Forbes guest stared as an
attorney. Forbes had played a recurring role as Ensign Ro Laren on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Clyde Kusatsu, who played Admiral Nakamura
in Star Trek: The Next Generation, also appeared as a judge.

Ethan Phillips (Neelix on Star Trek:
Voyager) appears in several of the third season episodes.

Patti Yasutake plays Dr. Claire Simon.
Patti Yasutake is best known for her portrayal of Alyssa Ogawa in
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek Generations, and Star Trek:
First Contact. She had also originally auditioned for the role of
Keiko O'Brien on Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

Some other actors who have appeared in
both Boston Legal and on a Star Trek series include: Christopher
Carroll (Gul Benil in the Deep Space Nine episode "Second
Skin" and Captain Alben in the Voyager episode "Favorite
Son"), Scott MacDonald (has appeared in all of the Star Trek
television spin-offs), Robert Foxworth (Admiral Leyton in the Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine and Vulcan administrator V'Las in the Star
Trek: Enterprise), Corbin Bernsen (Q2 in the Star Trek: The Next
Generation third season episode "Deja Q" in 1990), Joanna
Cassidy (T'Les, the mother of T'Pol, in the two Star Trek: Enterprise
episodes "Home" and "Awakening"), Henry Gibson
(Nilva in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Profit and
Lace), Sharon Lawrence (Amelia Earhart in the Star Trek: Voyager
episode "The 37's"), John Larroquette ( Klingon officer
Maltz in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) and Scott Bakula
(Jonathan Archer, the captain of the NX-01 Enterprise, on Star Trek: Enterprise).

After graduating from McGill University in
1952, Shatner became the business manager for the Mountain Playhouse
in Montreal before joining the Canadian National Repertory Theatre in
Ottawa. Trained as a classical Shakespearean actor, Shatner began
performing at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford,
Ontario, beginning in 1954 (shown above as Lucius with Lorne Greene
as Marcus Brutus in Julius Caesar). He played a range of roles at the
Stratford Festival in productions that included a minor role in the
opening scene of a renowned and nationally televised production of
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex directed by Tyrone Guthrie, Shakespeare's
Henry V, and Marlowe's Tamburlaine the Great, in which Shatner made
his Broadway debut in 1956. Not able to survive from stage work
alone, in 1954 he was cast as Ranger Bob on The Canadian Howdy Doody
Show. At Stratford Shatner was understudy to Christopher Plummer; the
two would later star as adversaries in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Though his official movie debut was in the
1951 Canadian film, The Butler's Night Off, Shatner's first feature
role came in the 1958 MGM film The Brothers Karamazov with Yul
Brynner, in which he starred as the youngest of the Karamazov
brothers, Alexei (above far right).

In
1959, he received decent reviews when he took on the role of Lomax
in the Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong (left).

In March 1959 while performing on stage in
Suzie Wong, Shatner was also playing detective Archie Goodwin in what
would have been television's first Nero Wolfe series had it not been
aborted by CBS after shooting a pilot and a few episodes. Other
televison work at the time included multiple appearances on Alfred
Hitchcock Presents, Thriller and The Twilight Zone in the episodes,
"Nick of Time" and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet"
(below left).

Later Shatner would appear in several
episodes of the comedy series 3rd Rock from the Sun, playing the role
of the Big Giant Head (The role earned Shatner an Emmy Award
nomination) alongside series star John Lithgow who portrayed Dick
Solomon (below right). Both the Big Giant Head and Dick mention
seeing something on the wing of their plane while flying on an
airplane. This is a double crossover as both John Lithgow and William
Shatner played the same role in The Twilight Zone. Shatner played the
role the first time in the episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet while
Lithgow starred in the remake used in The Twilight Zone movie.

In 1961, he starred in the Broadway play A
Shot in the Dark with Julie Harris and directed by Harold Clurman.
Walter Matthau (who won a Tony Award for his performance) and Gene
Saks were also featured in this play. In 1962, he starred in Roger
Corman's movie The Intruder and also appeared in the Stanley Kramer
film Judgment at Nuremberg.

Television
work continued in the early and mid sixties with episodes of,
Channing, The Outer Limits ("Cold Hands, Warm Heart"),
Family Theater, Route 66, The Reporter and 12 O'Clock High. He
guest-starred in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in an episode that also
featured Leonard Nimoy, with whom Shatner would soon be paired in
Star Trek.

Pre-Star Trek Shatner also guest-starred
on Gunsmoke and The Big Valley and starred in the critically
acclaimed drama For the People in 1965, as an assistant district
attorney, costarring with Jessica Walter (the program lasted for only
thirteen episodes).

Film work during this period included the
western The Outrage (1964) with Laurence Harvey, Claire Bloom, Paul
Newman and Edward G. Robinson and the 1966 gothic horror film Incubus.

Shatner was first cast as Captain James T.
Kirk for the second pilot of Star Trek, titled "Where No Man Has
Gone Before". He was then contracted to play Kirk for the Star
Trek series and held the role from 1966 to 1969. During its original
run on NBC, the series pulled in only modest ratings and was
cancelled after three seasons. In 1973, he returned to the role of
Captain Kirk, albeit only in voice, in the animated Star Trek series.

In his role as Kirk, Shatner famously
kissed actress Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) in the November 22nd,
1968, Star Trek episode, "Plato's Stepchildren." The
episode is popularly cited as the first example of an interracial
kiss between a white man and a black woman on a scripted television
show in the United States. The actual first black/white interracial
kiss on US television was between Sammy Davis, Jr. and Nancy Sinatra
on her varity special "Movin' With Nancy" a year before. It
took place at the end of a song-and-dance number by Sinatra and Sammy
Davis Jr., with him kissing her affectionately on the cheek. Sinatra
states in the commentary track on the DVD release that the seemingly
spontaneous kiss was carefully planned, and deliberately done at the
end of filming, when Davis had to leave for another job and could not
shoot a retake.

Shatner recalls in Star Trek Memories that
NBC insisted their lips never touch (the technique of turning their
heads away from the camera was used to conceal this). However,
Nichelle Nichols insists in her autobiography Beyond Uhura (written
in 1994 after Shatner's book) that the kiss was real, even in takes
where her head obscures their lips.

When
NBC executives learned of the kiss they became concerned it would
anger TV stations in the Deep South. Earlier in 1968, NBC had
expressed similar concern over a musical sequence in a Petula Clark
special in which she touched Harry Belafonte's arm, a moment cited as
the first occasion of direct physical contact on American television
between a man and woman of different races. At one point during
negotiations, the idea was brought up of having Spock kiss Uhura
instead, but William Shatner insisted that they stick with the
original script. NBC finally ordered that two versions of the scene
be shot, one where Kirk and Uhura kissed and one where they did not.
Having successfully recorded the former version of the scene, Shatner
and Nichelle Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of the latter
version, thus forcing the episode to go out with the kiss intact.

After Star Trek was cancelled that year,
Shatner experienced difficulty in finding work in the early 1970s
having been somewhat typecast from his role as Kirk. With very little
money and few acting prospects, Shatner got divorced from first wife,
Gloria Rand, lost his home and lived in a truck bed camper in the San
Fernando Valley until small roles turned into higher-paying jobs.
Shatner refers to this part of his life as "that period", a
humbling time during which he would take any odd job, including small
party appearances, to support his family.

Shatner again appeared in
"schlock" films, such as Corman's Big Bad Mama (1974) and
the horror film The Devil's Rain (1975), and the TV movie The Horror
at 37,000 Feet, which many fans believe is his worst work.

Shatner
did receive good reviews as the lead prosecutor in a 1971 PBS
adaptation of Saul Levitt's play The Andersonville Trial.

Other television appearances included a
starring role in the western-themed secret agent series Barbary Coast
during 1975 and 1976, and guest roles on many 1970s series such as
The Six Million Dollar Man, Columbo, The Rookies, Kung Fu, Ironside
and Mission: Impossible (left) and game shows such as The $20,000
Pyramid (once appearing opposite Nimoy in a week-long match-up billed
as "Kirk vs. Spock."), The Hollywood Squares, Celebrity
Bowling, Beat the Clock, Tattletales, Mike Stokey's Stump the Stars
and Match Game.

Richard Dawson, during an Archive of
American Television interview, mentioned that Shatner was Mark
Goodson's first choice to host the Family Feud pilot in 1976, but
gave the job to Dawson instead. He did a number of television
commercials for Ontario-based Loblaws and British Columbia-based
SuperValu supermarket chains in the 1970s, for General Motors, and
Promise margarine.

After its cancellation, Star Trek
unexpectedly engendered a cult following during the 1970s from
syndicated reruns, and Captain Kirk became a cultural icon and
Shatner began appearing at Star Trek conventions. In the mid-1970s,
Paramount began pre-production for a revised Star Trek television
series, tentatively titled Star Trek: Phase II. However, the
phenomenal success of Star Wars led the studio to instead consider
developing a Star Trek motion picture. Shatner and the other original
Star Trek cast members returned to their roles when Paramount
produced Star Trek: The Motion Picture, released in 1979 (above). It
re-established Shatner as a major film studio actor, and he played
Kirk in the next six Star Trek films, ending with the character's
death in 1994's Star Trek Generations. Also during the 1980s Shatner
also began directing film and television, directing numerous episodes
of T. J. Hooker and the feature film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

Although
it was the Trekkies that had resurrected Star Trek after
cancellation, in a 1986 Saturday Night Live sketch (left) about a
Star Trek convention, Shatner advised a room full of fans to "get
a life." The much-discussed sketch accurately portrayed his
feelings about Trekkies, which the actor had previously discussed in
interviews. Shatner had been their unwilling subject of adoration for
decades; as early as April 1968, a group attempted to rip his clothes
off as the actor left 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and he stopped attending
conventions for more than a decade during the 1970s and 1980s.
Shatner also appeared in the film Free Enterprise in 1998, in which
he played himself and tried to dispel the Kirk image of himself from
the view of the film's two lead characters. He also has found an
outlet in spoofing the cavalier, almost superhuman, persona of
Captain Kirk in films such as Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) and
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1 (1993). In 1994, he starred as the
murderer in the Columbo episode "Butterfly in Shades of Grey."

In May 1999, Simon & Schuster
published Shatner's book, Get a Life!, which details his experiences
with Star Trek fandom, anecdotes from Trek conventions, and his
interviews with dedicated fans, in particular those who found deeper
meaning in the franchise.

In 2000, Shatner co-starred in the Sandra
Bullock comedy Miss Congeniality as Stan Fields (above), alongside
future Boston Legal co-star Candice Bergen. He reprised the role in
the 2004 sequel Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. Shatner also
was featured in the 2001 live-action/animated film Osmosis Jones (as
the voice of Mayor Phlegmming), and in the 2004 comedy DodgeBall: A
True Underdog Story, which starred Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn.

Shatner
was not offered a role in the 2009 film Star Trek. Director J. J.
Abrams said in July 2007 that the production was "desperately
trying to figure out a way to put him in" but that to "shove
him in... would be a disaster", an opinion echoed by Shatner in
several interviews. At a convention held in 2010, Shatner commented
on the film by saying "I've seen that wonderful film."

Shatner's autobiography Up Till Now: The
Autobiography was released in 2008. He was assisted in writing it by
David Fisher. Shatner has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (for
television work) at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard. He also has a star on
the Canada's Walk of Fame. Shatner was the first Canadian actor to
star in three successful television series on three different major
networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC). He also starred in the CBS sitcom $#*!
My Dad Says, which is based on the Twitter feed Shit My Dad Says
created by Justin Halpern. The series premiered in late 2010 and was
canceled May 2011. Shatner is also the host of the interview show
Shatner's Raw Nerve on The Biography Channel, and the Discovery
Channel television series Weird or What?

In 2011, Shatner starred in The Captains,
a feature-length documentary which he also wrote and directed. The
film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have
portrayed starship captains within the Star Trek franchise. Shatner's
interviewees included Patrick Stewart, Avery Brooks, Kate Mulgrew,
Scott Bakula, and Chris Pine. In the film, Shatner also interviews
Christopher Plummer, who is an old friend and colleague from
Shatner's days with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Shatner
began his musical career with the spoken-word 1968 album The
Transformed Man, delivering exaggerated, interpretive recitations of
"Mr. Tambourine Man" and "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds." He performed a reading of the Elton John song
"Rocket Man" during the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards
that has been widely parodied. Ben Folds, who has worked with him
several times, produced and co-wrote Shatner's well-received second
studio album, Has Been, in 2004. His third studio album, Seeking
Major Tom, was released on October 11th, 2011. The fourth, Ponder the
Mystery, was released in October 2013 on Cleopatra Records, produced
and composed by musician Billy Sherwood (ex member of YES). William
Shatner has done a concert tour with some ex members of YES as Tony
Kaye and Billy Sherwood with the group of Circa.

In February 2012, Shatner performed in a
new one-man show on Broadway, called Shatner's World: We Just Live in
It. After a 3-week run at the Music Box Theatre. On April 24, 2014 he
performed for one night only an autobiographical one-man show on
Broadway, which was later broadcast in over 700 theaters across
Canada, Australia, and the United States. A large portion of the
revenue went to charity.

Shatner dislikes watching himself perform,
and claims that he has never watched any Star Trek or Boston Legal
television episodes nor any of the Star Trek movies except the
unedited footage from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier which he
directed, although his book Star Trek Memories makes reference to his
having re-watched episodes of Star Trek.

Shatner
has been married four times. His first marriage, to Gloria Rand
(née Rabinowitz), produced three daughters: Leslie (b. 1958),
Lisabeth (b. 1960), (seen with her father at right in the Star Trek
episode Miri) and Melanie (b. 1964); from an earlier relationship
with Toronto actress Kathy McNeil, Shatner has one son, Peter (b.
1956). Rand was a Canadian actress and they married on August 12th,
1956. Shatner left Rand during Star Trek: The Original Series, after
which she filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized in 1969.

Shatner's second marriage to Marcy
Lafferty (daughter of producer Perry Lafferty) lasted from 1973 to
1996. His third marriage was to Nerine Kidd Shatner, from 1997 until
her death in 1999. On August 9th, 1999, Shatner returned home around
10 pm to discover Nerine's body at the bottom of their backyard
swimming pool. She was 40 years old. An autopsy detected alcohol and
Valium in her blood, but the coroner ruled the cause of death as an
accidental drowning. The LAPD ruled out foul play, and the case was
closed. Speaking to the press shortly after his wife's death, a
clearly shaken and emotional Shatner said that she "meant
everything" to him, and called her his "beautiful
soulmate." Shatner urged the public to support Friendly House, a
non-profit organization that helps women re-establish themselves in
the community after suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction. In
his 2008 book Up Till Now: The Autobiography, Shatner discusses how
Leonard Nimoy helped take Nerine to treatment for her alcoholism.
Since 2001, Shatner has been married to Elizabeth Anderson Martin. In
2004, she co-wrote the song "Together" on Shatner's album
Has Been.

Shatner first appeared on screen with
Leonard Nimoy in 1964, when both actors guest-starred in an episode
of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. entitled "The Project Strigas
Affair." However, Shatner states in his autobiography that he
does not recall meeting Nimoy at that time.

Shatner and Nimoy have
remained good friends since their days on Star Trek. Nimoy was best
man at Shatner's third marriage in 1997. The both suffer from
tinnitus (ringing in the ears), which is a symptom of hearing loss.
Nimoy and Shatner likely got it filming a Star Trek episode called
"Arena" (1967), where they stood close to a special effects
explosion resulting in Nimoy having tinnitus in his right ear and
Shatner having it in his left ear.

Shatner has been a friend of actress
Heather Locklear since 1982, when Locklear began co-starring with him
on T. J. Hooker as Officer Stacy Sheridan. She was also appearing in
a semi-regular role in another Aaron Spelling production, Dynasty, at
the same time. In 2005, Locklear appeared in two episodes of
Shatner's Boston Legal (above) as Kelly Nolan, an attractive,
youthful woman being tried for killing her much older, wealthy husband.

For
years, Shatner was accused of being difficult to work with by some
of his Star Trek co-stars, most notably George Takei, Walter Koenig
and James Doohan, the difficult relationship with the latter two
Shatner himself acknowledged in his autobiography Star Trek Movie
Memories. In the 2004 Star Trek DVD sets, Shatner seemed to have made
up with Takei, but their differences continue to resurface, erupting
in full force again in 2014. In the 1990s, Shatner made numerous
attempts to reconcile with Doohan, but was unsuccessful for some
time, Doohan being the only former Star Trek co-star steadfastly
refusing to be interviewed by Shatner for his 1993 memoir Star Trek
Memories and its 1994 follow-up, Star Trek Movie Memories; however,
an Associated Press article published at the time of Doohan's final
convention appearance in late August 2004 stated that Doohan, already
suffering from severe health problems, had forgiven Shatner and they
had mended their relationship at a Star Trek convention. Convention
organizer Sky Conway attested, "At our show... Bill and Jimmy
went on stage together. Behind the scenes and before they went on
stage, they hugged each other, apologized and expressed their love
and admiration for each other. Bill specifically asked me to get them
together so he could make amends and clear the air between the two of
them before it was too late."

In 2006, Shatner sold his
kidney stone for $25,000 to GoldenPalace.com. In an appearance on The
View on May 16th, 2006, Shatner said the $25,000 and an additional
$20,000 raised from the cast and crew of Boston Legal paid for the
building of a house by Habitat for Humanity.

In
his spare time, Shatner enjoys breeding and showing American
Saddlebreds and Quarter Horses. Shatner rode one of his own horses, a
mare named Great Belles of Fire, in his role as James T. Kirk in Star
Trek Generations. Shatner has a 150 hectare (360 acre) farm near
Versailles, Kentucky, named Belle Reve (from the French beau
rève, "Beautiful Dream" - Belle Reve was the name of
Blanche Dubois and her sister Stella's family home in A Streetcar
Named Desire), where he raises American Saddlebreds. The farm's
activities help benefit the Central Kentucky Riding for Hope
"Horses For Heroes" program. Shatner also plays on the
World Poker Tour in the Hollywood Home Games, where celebrities play
for their favorite charities. Since 1990, he has been a leading force
behind the Hollywood Charity Horse Show, which raises money for
children's charities, pictured above with Nimoy and Star Trek (2009)
cast members John Cho, Karl Urban and Bruce Greenwood and at left
with "TV daughter" Kaley Cuoco. In 2013, in a humorous pop
culture mash-up, Cuoco from the sitcom The Big Bang Theory joined
William Shatner as his fictitious daughter in a series of commercials
for Priceline.com. The first ad sees Shatner, sporting a goatee and
cap, driving a little girl, played by Holland Baum, who is carrying a
pink backpack and stuffed bunny. He drops her off in front of a
mysterious dojo at the top of the mountain, where a man, Master Hahn,
is waiting. In the next scene, set 20 years later, Cuoco, appears at
the same spot with him as Shatner pulls up, "So how did it
go," a clean-shaven Shatner asks. Cuoco answers, "Well,
DAD, spent my childhood living with monks, learning the art of
deal-making." she replies.